April was an amazing month! First I thought it would be a quiet, peaceful month. But then it was a lot of work! I’ve got an acceptation for the Nordic sociological Association Conference 2011 in Oslo. So I will present my poster “Renaissance of the Library: Catalyser for Participation in Cultural Life and Centre of Urbanity” in August in Oslo!

The project „Renaissance of the Library“ is planned as my forthcoming post-doc project. It focuses on public libraries in urban space: New libraries like the planned new Deichman Bibliotek in Oslo may act as centres of the social life in a city and they may be catalysers for participation in cultural life. Public libraries are no more just places to loan books, but they may be cultural and social midpoints of a city. They provide a wide range of services like exhibitions, readings, discussions, events, and meeting spaces for heterogenic groups of users. The participation of a city’s population in these spatial and social library services is crucial for urbanity and the development of knowledge cities. In this perspective libraries could have a prospective renaissance, even in times of the internet and e-books.

The poster should demonstrate the following points: Idea of the project; state of the art and results of my dissertation project on which the project „Renaissance of the Library“ is built on; statement of relevance; research questions; and concept of methods.

The project is intended to start 2011/12 and its research design is planned as a case study. Libraries of scientific interest could be the new planned public library in Stockholm and the new Deichman Bibliotek in Oslo. In both cases it would be possible to analyse differences in the social structure of a city initialised by the new public libraries.